Little Saigon


Little Saigon is a name given to ethnic enclaves of expatriate Vietnamese mainly in the United States. Saigon is the former name of the capital of the former South Vietnam, where a large number of first-generation Vietnamese immigrants emigrating to the United States originate from, whereas Hanoi is the current capital of Vietnam. Around 125,000 ethnic Vietnamese escaped Vietnam and immigrated to the United States after the Fall of Saigon to avoid communist occupation in 1975.
The most well-established and largest Vietnamese-American enclaves, not all of which are called Little Saigon, are in Orange County, California; San Jose, California; and Houston, Texas. Relatively smaller communities also exist, including the comparatively nascent Vietnamese commercial districts in San Francisco, San Diego, Atlanta, Sacramento, Philadelphia, Denver, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, Falls Church, Virginia, Orlando, and Seattle.

States

California

Orange County

The oldest, largest, and most prominent Little Saigon is centered in Orange County, California, where over 189,000 Vietnamese Americans reside. With other Southern California counties, this region constitutes the largest Vietnamese American population outside of Vietnam. The community originally started emerging in Westminster, and quickly spread to the adjacent city of Garden Grove. Today, these two cities rank as the highest concentration of Vietnamese-Americans of any cities in the United States at 37.1% and 31.1%, respectively.
About south of Los Angeles, Westminster was once a predominantly white middle-class suburban city of Orange County with ample farmland, but the city later experienced a decline by the 1970s. Since 1978, the nucleus of Little Saigon has long been Bolsa Avenue, where early pioneers Danh Quach and Frank Jao established businesses. During that year, the well-known Nguoi Viet Daily News also began publishing from a home in Garden Grove. Other new Vietnamese-American arrivals soon revitalized the area by opening their own businesses in old, formerly white-owned storefronts, and investors constructed large shopping centers containing a mix of businesses. The Vietnamese community and businesses later spread into adjacent Garden Grove, Midway City, Fountain Valley, Stanton, Anaheim, and Santa Ana.
In Orange County, Little Saigon is now a wide, spread-out community dotted with myriad suburban-style strip malls containing a mixture of Vietnamese and Chinese-Vietnamese businesses. It is located southwest of Disneyland between the State Route 22 and Interstate 405. However, the main focus of Little Saigon is Bolsa Avenue, which runs through Westminster; the street was officially designated Little Saigon by the city council of Westminster in the late 1980s. The borders of Little Saigon can be considered to be Trask Avenue and W McFadden Avenue on the north and south and Euclid Street and Magnolia Street on the east and west, respectively. About three-quarters of the population in this area are Vietnamese.
Image:Tet Festival Little Saigon.jpg|thumb|Tết Festival in Little Saigon, Orange County, California
Westminster is generally considered the main cultural center of the Vietnamese American community with several Vietnamese-language television stations, radio stations, and newspapers originating from Little Saigon and adjacent areas. At least one radio station broadcast 24 hours a day in Vietnamese and 4 television substations broadcasting in Vietnamese 24 hours a day as of 2009, and several newspapers serve the Vietnamese-American community. Little Saigon has also emerged as the prominent center of the Vietnamese pop music industry with several recording studios, and with a recording industry many times larger than in Vietnam itself. Vietnamese music recorded in Westminster are distributed and sold in Vietnamese communities throughout the United States and in Australia, France, and Germany as well as illegally in Vietnam.
Garden Grove Park is the location of an annual Vietnamese Lunar New Year festival held in late January - early February known as Tết. Small amusement park rides, dances, and contests are held in Garden Grove Park which is across the street from Bolsa Grande High School grounds and is hosted by the Union of Vietnamese Student Association. Since 2013, the annual festival has been relocated to the OC Fair Grounds in Costa Mesa.
The Vietnamese American population has now begun to diffuse from Little Saigon to traditionally working-class Hispanic cities, such as Santa Ana, and southward to professional middle-class predominantly white cities such as Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, Irvine, and Orange. Over the years, the vibrant community of Little Saigon has experienced frequent openings and closures of small mom-and-pop Vietnamese businesses, resulting in sights of some abandoned strip plazas. The changing landscape of the Vietnamese American population would bring a more multicultural flavor to Orange County, but as with Chinatowns, could potentially eliminate its identity as a "Little Saigon" as the population of foreign-born Vietnamese old-timers declines and more younger generations of Vietnamese American families attune to mainstream American culture and move on to affluent communities further away from the Little Saigon area.

San Diego

When the "first wave" of Vietnamese immigrants started to arrive in 1981, many settled in the communities adjacent to San Diego State University, such as City Heights and Talmadge, better known as East San Diego. As families and individuals became more affluent however, many relocated to other communities in the city: Linda Vista, Clairemont, Serra Mesa, etc. and what was then brand-new tract communities such as Mira Mesa, Rancho Penasquitos, Rancho Bernardo, etc.
With a population of about 50,000, the San Diego metropolitan area ranks as one of the largest Vietnamese communities in the United States. Because of the Vietnamese population's unique migration patterns in the city, it does not have a huge concentration of Vietnamese businesses in a particular area like other metropolitan areas Still, there are three notable Vietnamese business districts in the San Diego region: Mira Mesa Boulevard, El Cajon Boulevard, and Convoy Street/Linda Vista Road.
On June 4, 2013, City Council approved Little Saigon Cultural and Commercial District in City Heights, San Diego, which is a six-block section of El Cajon Boulevard from Euclid to Highland avenues. On February 1, 2019, Little Saigon signs were revealed to be installed on Interstate 15.

San Gabriel Valley

Due to the large influx and presence of relatively poor ethnic Chinese refugees from Vietnam in the 1980s, the San Gabriel Valley region of Los Angeles has another important concentration of Vietnamese in Southern California. While not generally referred to as "Little Saigon", the stretch of Garvey Avenue in the working-class barrios of Rosemead, South El Monte, and El Monte have a relatively heavy but scattered collection of businesses owned mainly by majority ethnic Chinese Vietnamese with a growing number of ethnic Vietnamese residents and business owners as well. Many of these businesses are housed in tiny strip malls while others occupy freestanding, aging buildings. These Vietnamese businesses are very gradually replacing businesses owned by Hispanics.
Rosemead is the Vietnamese center of the San Gabriel Valley. One particular shopping center in Rosemead, called Diamond Square, is anchored by the Taiwanese American chain 99 Ranch Market and contains various Chinese Vietnamese small businesses and a food court catering to local Asians. The Diamond Square is now closed, replaced by The Square anchored by Korean American stores. The 99 Ranch Market is replaced by the Square Supermarket.
It remains a major hub for working-class Vietnamese and Mainland Chinese expatriates residing in the area. Many Vietnamese of ethnic Chinese origin also tend to own various businesses - especially supermarkets, restaurants, beauty parlors, and auto repair shops - in the main general mixed-Chinese commercial thoroughfares of Garvey Avenue in Monterey Park, California and Valley Boulevard in Alhambra, California, San Gabriel, California, and Rosemead. There are already several phở and bánh mì eateries represented along Valley Boulevard.
The Sriracha hot sauce manufacturer Huy Fong Foods is owned by a Chinese Vietnamese refugee named David Tran and was originally located in Chinatown, Los Angeles but it relocated to its larger facility in Rosemead.
In 2005, John Tran became the first Vietnamese American to be elected to a seat on the city council of Rosemead. Since 2006, he has been the mayor of the city, a position that is held by rotation among the council members.

San Jose

Comprising over 180,000 residents, about 10.6% of the population, San Jose's Vietnamese community is comparable to the one in Orange County. San Jose has more Vietnamese residents than any single city outside of Vietnam. Vietnamese-language radio programs from Orange County are rebroadcast in the region, though San Jose does contain locally produced Vietnamese-language radio and TV stations such as Que Huong Media, Vien Thao, and Vietoday TV. Although Viet Mercury, the Vietnamese-language edition of the San Jose Mercury News, is now discontinued, many other publications offer Vietnamese literature enjoyed by the community, such as Thang Mo and Trieu Thanh magazines as well as newspapers from Calitoday, Viet Bao, Thoi Bao Daily News, and Viet Nam Nhat Bao. Several strip malls on Tully Road and Senter Road, cater to Vietnamese tastes, such as Lion Plaza on the intersection of Tully and King and Carribbees Center on Senter and Lewis.
The epicenter of the Vietnamese-American community of San Jose, however, is on Story Road, home to the popular Grand Century Mall and Vietnam Town and is officially designated by the San Jose City Council as "Little Saigon". Like its counterpart in Orange County, a freeway offramp sign was placed in 2013 on Highway 101 and Freeway 280, designating the Story Road and McLaughlin Avenue exits to Little Saigon. Lee's Sandwiches, as well as the phở chain, Pho Hoa Restaurant, had their first locations here in San Jose. Due to the ethnic diversity of the city, where Vietnamese-Americans here live side by side with other ethnic minorities such as Mexican-Americans, Filipino-Americans, and Indian-Americans, the Vietnamese community in San Jose is more fully integrated into the local community.
The Vietnamese community of San Jose has been politically divided over the naming of the business district, with various groups favoring "Little Saigon", "New Saigon", and "Vietnamese Business District". Non-Vietnamese businesses and residents, as well as the San Jose Hispanic Chamber of Commerce have also opposed the name "Little Saigon". In November 2007, the San Jose City Council voted 8–3 to choose the compromise name "Saigon Business District", resulting in ongoing protest, debate, and an effort to recall city council member Madison Nguyen, who proposed the name "Saigon Business District". On March 4, 2008, after a public meeting in which more than 1000 "Little Saigon" supporters participated, the city council voted 11–1 to rescind the name "Saigon Business District", but stopped short of renaming it. The recall of Nguyen failed in March 2009.
San Jose also granted the building of the Viet Museum in Kelley Park next to the City Historic Museum. The Viet Museum had its grand opening August 25, 2007.